


Alchemists and Paladins

by The_Violet_Howler



Series: FreeVLDS8 Theories [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Essays, Gen, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Speculation, not allurance friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 16:24:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Violet_Howler/pseuds/The_Violet_Howler
Summary: Re-posted from tumblr for archival purposes.#TeamPurpleLion has laid out credible evidence that the Season 8 released in December was edited on the orders of someone higher up the corporate ladder than the EPs, and that it happened after production of the season was already completed.TPL member Leaking Hate laid out all signs of editing within the episodes themselves, and offered an educated guess at what Season 8 would have looked like prior to editing based on story structure, narrative devices, and foreshadowing.This idea came to me when I realized there was a gap in Hate's outline where the specifics of what happened aren't clear due to content being cut out in the editing process, but I believe could have been a logical place where Shiro could pilot the Black Lion one last time before the final battle.





	Alchemists and Paladins

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for any Allurance shippers wishing to read this. 
> 
> While I am not necessarily against the ship and quite frankly didn't care who either character ended up with, I don't think they would still have been together at the end of the original cut of Season 8 - leaving aside the fact that she doesn't appear as interested in their relationship as he is in the season we got, and the fact that Alteans living for centuries means she'll outlive him either way, Allura and Lance's voice actors were called in to record new dialogue as part of the editing process in July, which is when TPL has confirmed the editing began.

This analysis is derived from [@leakinghate](https://tmblr.co/m2dqoeMFn-m3jBepZ9tqRGg)‘s [Seek Truth in Darkness](https://leakinghate.tumblr.com/post/183160042843/seek-truth-in-darkness) post that breaks down the “errors” and discrepancies in Season 8 that point to the version we got in December being cut up and frankensteined back together in post-production. 

One of my big disappointments is that we never got on-screen acknowledgement of Shiro’s connection to the Black Lion following Season 6 despite the fact that he was still wearing the Black Paladin colors. While re-reading Leaking Hate’s meta, a few ideas occurred to me that helped me formulate a theory about Black Paladin!Shiro in Season 8.

Despite Shiro moving on from being the Black Paladin to being captain of the Atlas, the show persistently keeps everyone in their original uniform colors. While it could just be down to staying true to the original 80s show, the visual adherence to the Season 1 configuration is a pattern that persists all the way into at least Season 7, and a few times in Season 8. There are multiple times where the team is arranged according to the lion configuration, but Lance is still in the left leg spot that Allura, as Blue Paladin, should be in, even though he’s now flying the red lion (ex: the astral plane in S5E3). The same is also done for the red lion itself (ex: the roar during Shiro’s rebirth in S6E7) a few times in at least Season 6 and 7. Even in Season 8 itself we still saw characters posed according to the season 1 configuration:

Keith is on Shiro’s right side and Pidge is on his left, exactly like the Paladin configuration in Seasons 1-2. 

The marketing also emphasizes the original team lineup: 

In one of the two promo images released at NYCC, the team arrangement from left to right is Lance, Allura, Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Hunk. The incorrect order for the current pilot configuration, but still in the right order for the Season 1 configuration. 

The big NYCC poster shows the team, from left to right, as Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, Keith, Lance, Allura. Left leg, left arm, head, right arm, right leg.

And in terms of the textual narrative, even in their new positions post-Season 3, Keith, Shiro, and Lance thrive in their new positions by relying on the textual attributes of their previous ones. Shiro’s battlefield promotion to captain of the Atlas comes from him acting a textbook black paladin: a born leader, in control, “someone whose men will follow without hesitation.” 

All of this indicated that we should have seen a return to the S1-2 configuration at least once in Season 8, but in the edited version we got in December at least, that never happened.

But if it was meant to happen in the original cut of Season 8, there is logistically only one place for this to happen: The Storming the Pyramid Sequence, as #TeamPurpleLion calls it. 

Leaking Hate has laid out [a detailed, episode by episode breakdown](https://leakinghate.tumblr.com/post/183160042843/seek-truth-in-darkness) of all the evidence of cuts and editing in the version of Season 8 released in December, and extrapolates a likely outline of what was supposed to happen based on what was edited, the story structure of the series overall, and the plot points introduced in the first half of the season that were subsequently left hanging.

Multiple plot points indicate that Lotor was still alive inside Sincline and was supposed to be rescued before the final battle:

  * Despite it ceasing to be relevant after Honerva’s flashback episode, there are two shots in “Genesis” depicting first the Atlas and then Coalition ships flying towards the Altean Colony planet. No one comments on this unexplained detour.
  * The other Alteans serving Honerva besides the ones who were held aboard the Atlas in the second half, Merla, and the other two Robeast pilots, are nowhere to be seen when Coran and Slav board the pyramid in “The Zenith”. Honerva’s comments about how only the two other Robeast pilots remained loyal indicate they all defected en masse, but we are not shown this.
  * When the Atlas arrives in Altea’s solar system, the first interior shots of the Atlas bridge have pink lighting accompanied by Lotor’s theme music, while the rest of the scenes in this section of “Uncharted Regions” have golden lighting.
  * “Uncharted Regions” opens with Honerva declaring that the Paladins know her plans is an advantage, echoing her son’s words before he tricks Voltron into retrieving the Sincline comet in S3E4, indicating that she intends to trick them into helping her. Her next appearance shows her in her new mech scanning for her perfect reality. She is then shown inside the pyramid saying that Allura is awake. There is no explanation for how she got back to the pyramid and changed back into her Altean garb despite the battle happening outside, nor do we learn why Allura is even necessary for her plans. The call back indicates that Honerva needs to accomplish something with Altean Alchemy that Allura can do that she cannot. 
  * There are at least two split-screen shots that are so heavily cropped to the point that Allura, Lance, and/or Hunk’s faces get cut off at the edge of the screen. If there were no other characters who needed to be removed, the shot would have been planned so that those cut-offs never happened.
  * There’s a total of 11 shots in the last three episodes where a character is off model, and their proportions are always wrong for a human but just right for a supposedly-dead-Lotor. (Things that give it away include broad shoulders, the character’s head being too small for the size the body is drawn, elongated arms, legs twice the length of the upper body, and in some shots, fangs.)
  * Lotor has no shadow when he appears alongside the deceased original paladins in the final episode, and his image is simply a stock photo from the official website with the leg slightly warped to hide the lack of shadow.



Lotor being healed and rescued neatly explains why Honerva needed Allura and considered the Paladins knowing her plans to be an advantage (because she cheated the trials of Oriande, she doesn’t have the power to heal Lotor herself, but Allura does, as demonstrated with the dead forest in “Launch Date”), where the remaining Alteans vanished to (they abandon Honerva after Lotor rejects her), and why the Atlas apparently makes a detour to the Colony (the Alteans need to be dropped off somewhere safe before Lotor, Voltron, and the Atlas can go back to face Honerva for the final battle).

But there are two things that still got me thinking about this outline:

  * With how powerful the Altean robeasts are shown in S7 and S8, it raises the question of how Allura was able to get from the Atlas to the pyramid without being spotted by Merla or the two other robeast pilots. Even if the Atlas was keeping them occupied, “Lion’s Pride Part 2” and “Genesis” have shown how much of a challenge it is for the Atlas and Voltron to defeat even a single Altean robeast, let alone multiple. So, somebody needs to form Voltron and keep the Robeasts busy so that Allura can storm the pyramid for her alchemist vs. alchemist rematch with Honerva in the first place.
  * As Leaking Hate mentions in their meta, many of the shots with a character having Lotor’s proportions are in paladin armor. Given the damage shown to Lotor’s uniform, in order for him to have something to wear in the final battle, it’s implied that he’s wearing what used to be the Black Paladin armor that Shiro wore during the first half of Season 7.



My argument is that if the visual adherence to the color scheme of the lions the team started out in was supposed to go anywhere, the only logical place for it to occur is during the sequence where they assault the pyramid and rescue Lotor:

  * Lance could volunteer to fly Blue so Allura can go rescue Lotor, Keith steps back into Red so Lance can fly blue, and Shiro steps back into the Black Lion to lead the team one more time.
  * Leaking Hate’s meta pointed out how the Beta-Four-Ex-Seven coordinates have pink lighting in the backdrop, fitting with Allura’s color scheme as well.
  * Since this is indicated to be the site of the big Alchemist vs. Alchemist rematch between Honerva and Allura, it would beautifully parallel their previous fight at the end of season 2: Voltron fighting a mecha created by Honerva (Zarkon’s armor, the Robeasts) while Allura faces the witch directly.
  * If Shiro wore the Black Paladin armor into battle one last time, then handed it off to Lotor for the final battle against Honerva, it would make a nice call back to when he gave Lotor the Black Bayard to use against Zarkon in “Blood Duel”.
  * It would also, in a way, be a nice callback to his line in S6E3 “I don’t know what’s more fulfilling than being a paladin” by showing that while he has found things that are just as fulfilling, he is still just as much a paladin as the others. 
  * In “Tailing a Comet” back in Season 3, Lance expresses thet Blue would take him back in a second if he asked, but he doesn’t want to stand in the way of Allura’s growth. If he pilots the Blue Lion while she fights Honerva, Lance would be stepping back into the role of Blue Paladin so that Allura can continue her growth and do something that only she can do.
  * While this part is hazier, an additional parallel that occurred to me would be if Allura was accompanied by a pair of Galra each time she confronted Honerva: in Season 2, she was accompanied by Kolivan and Antok. Considering their absence from the plot after Genesis, perhaps Acxa and Zethrid would have accompanied Allura to face Honerva in Season 8? 



While I can understand why some people thought the ship had potential, there was one detail I kept seeing everyone ignore that convinced me that Lance and Allura would never have worked out as a long-term relationship no matter what happened with Lotor. Leaving aside the fact that Allura doesn’t appear to be as interested in the relationship as Lance is, Alteans have already been established to have a life span measured in centuries. Coran himself is over six hundred years old, and Allura’s probably at least a century or two herself. Short of pulling some species-changing magic out of thin air to make Lance _actually_ Altean and not just give him the markings, Allura is going to outlive Lance by several lifetimes regardless of their relationship status.

Throughout the season we got in December, Lance questions Allura’s choices. Hate’s meta outlines how Lance’s arc was meant to lead to him supporting her decisions. In addition to supporting Allura verbally when she argues for the rescue mission, he would be supporting her physically by offering to take her place in the Blue Lion for that battle, because while they are both Blue Paladins (just as Shiro and Kieth are The Black Paladins), rescuing and healing Lotor is something that only she can do.

  * It would also be an excellent reversal of an earlier point in the season: in Clear Day, Lance signing his name on all the Blue Lion plushies even though the current Blue Paladin is Allura feels like him selfishly trying to claim Allura as his own, while for the rescue mission, he physically “reclaims” the Blue Lion out of selflessness to both literally and symbolically let her go.



This is part educated guess and part wishful thinking on my part because I’m still salty that the visual adherence to the Season 1 configuration never went anywhere. There is no guarantee that any of this happened in the original cut of Season 8. But if the visual emphasis on the season 1 pilot configuration long after we’ve switched over to the one from the 80s was supposed to have any payoff, there is only one place in the original cut of Season 8 where it could realistically work. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering where this would all fit, one of the TL;DRs of the link to Hate's meta is that because Season 7 was edited late in production to include the MFE pilots, 3 episodes' worth of content critical to the overarching plot was moved into Season 8 to make room (with the Feud created to fill in the gap), and one new episode, Day 47, was created from scratch to give the MFEs more screen time. Meaning that before July 2018, Season 8 was supposed to be 17 episodes long instead of the 13 we got.


End file.
